Excursions from Berlin?
 

Any suggestions for excursions/ tours from Berlin?

I originally booked a hop-on, hop-off bus tour but realized that all operators only have it in German.

Preferably, destination is no more than 2-3 hours as I have to commute round trip back to my hotel in Berlin.

Thanks!

I’d try somewhere like Potsdam which is easily reachable and without a 2-3 hour trip to get there (which would really be 4-6 hour round trip)

But to be honest I’m surprised at a tourist bus company only offering a commentary in German as that would severely limit their customer base.

Potsdam is a great place to visit and live but there are also other nice places like Schwielowsee or Spreewald which can be reached easily from Berlin in a short time.

I highly recommend https://www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com/

He can personalize a tour for anything you want to see in Berlin and surrounding areas and for any amount of time.

This one offers it in English. https://www.berlin-city-tour.de/

• Does the service offer any commentary or guide?Yes, we will provide you with free earphones which you can plug into the GPS audio guide and choose between 13 different languages:
  
  • English
  • German
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Italian
  • Portuguese
  • Turkish
  • Arabian
  • Hebrew
  • Russian
  • Polish
  • Chinese
  • Japanese
  You can reuse the earbuds when you hop-on the bus again.
  

Any specific travel company that you guys would recommend?

I'm sorry - I usually took either trains or used our car so I can't give you any personal advice based on experience.

Skip travel companies, I would recommend to do it on your own by train or rental car.

As mentioned in post #4. He also does tours of Potsdam.

Take a look, if you'd like, at a few of his YouTube videos or Twitter videos to see if his style is to your liking.

Take the S or U Bahn and explore yourself!

The fare would be € 4.40 each way.

Agree. Potsdam is easy with regional trains or the S-Bahn. Once in the city, follow the signs to the castles (or take a bus from the station). I you are not afraid of walking a few km, it is so easy and a great experience any tour bus will not delver.

Flying back home tomorrow.

Came here Thursday and just spent the day walking around the KaDeWe area. I am staying at the IC.

Friday: Hop-on, Hop-off bus in the morning. This was not as organized as the one in Vienna. I walked all the way to Checkpoint Charlie in the afternoon in order to burn off all the schnitzels and knodels that I have eaten in Vienna and Berlin.

Saturday: Route B of the above which goes to mostly East Berlin, then did some shopping.

Sunday: Potsdam and Sansouci tour.

I lost two nights on this trip because I had to 'position' for a flight via IAH (otherwise I would have flow direct from SEA). Main aim of this trip was to fly on the 747-400, and Europe was a side trip. LOL

Things I was able to cross out of my bucket list:

Fly the 747-400 in the nose section
See the capital of Germany
Walk around Checkpoint Charlie
See the Brandenburg Gate
Visit Potsdam

As a bonus in terms of anthropological studies, I actually saw naturists in Tiergarden. (This was hilarious as for this reason, my London taxi driver and Kimpton check in agent both could not help commenting how 'the Germans are weird' when I mentioned that Berlin was in my itinerary. The Thames tour guide also asked the whole ferry to stare at the naked people at the sauna underneath the bridge to shame them for 'having no care in the world.'

Berlin will be lower in my priority list of places to visit 'overall', and 'visit again'. There are many things to do, but it does not seem to have as much good food and solid identity as London, or Vienna, which are the other two places I visited this time.

My list of things I need to do next time I am here:

Climb the dome of the Reichstag (reservations are needed online and I could not get one til 2 weeks after my visit guided tours are two months out!!!)
Visit Museum Island

To me, August apparently is not a good time to visit. Weather is too hot, especially compared to the PNW, and there are hordes of tourist everywhere.

Have you had a look at this thread, where many flyertalkes gave advices to another Flyertalker visiting Berlin?

Yes I did, and did it before I even flew to BER.

I wrote the above response to the thread that I started in order to ‘close’ it off.

Checkpoint Charlie was probably the biggest disappointment of my recent trip; however, it was a relatively short walk from my hotel.

I had two outstanding meals in Berlin, one at Cookies Cream and the second at Ernst.

As far as what to see on your next trip, the Berlin Wall Memorial, Gendarmenmarkt, Museum Island and the East Side Gallery are not to be missed.

It's the Manneken Pis of Berlin. Everyone wants to see it, but who sees it is not enthusiastic about it.

I was cautioned that it would be disappointing. I wasn't quite prepared for how underwhelmed I'd be; it's almost cartoonish.

The Allied Museum which contains a real checkpoint booth as well as other artifacts was much more interesting. Agree that the checkpoint charlie is very cheesy and that's without the "photographers" who wanted money to take pictures but are no linger permitted.

Have a trip coming up in February. Would those places be okay in the dead of winter or just spend more time in Berlin?

Hi
Potsdam ( including Scholss sanssouci with its gardens and orangerie etc would be worth a visit ( might have snow on the ground and will likely be cold)

Regards


TBS

Winter is not the perfect time, but not a dead time. There is still enough to explore.

Not an excursion from Berlin, but within Berlin, the Sammlung Boros is a really interesting gallery built in an old bunker/bomb shelter. Because of the weirdness of the structure, you can only go through with a guided tour, but the tours are only about a dozen people. They have frequent english and german language tours that you have to book in advance.

I’ve been to Berlin at least a dozen times in the last 3 years or so and never wanted to visit Checkpoint Charlie!

But an almost everyone I’ve met who has been has been thoroughly disappointed by it!

But thanks to worldiswide for the tip about the Allied Museum and to chrisl137 for a reminder about the Boros gallery. Both have gone on my list for future visits

You are welcome. The whole area around the allied museum is interesting. The American embassy was formerly located there as well. Easy to get to on public transportation.

I think the current Checkpoint Charlie is only really interesting (and still not worth more than a few minutes) if you went through it back when there was an actual border there, at least if you were headed east. I went through a couple times in the 80s and it was quite the contrast from West Berlin to East. IIRC, there was an "electronics" store just past Charlie that had long picture windows filled with televisions and typewriters. There was a single model of each, but there were a ton in the window. FWIW, the high end PCs at the time were 80286 based. Now I think there's a KFC and a McD's along there, and I found most of the places I went in former East Berlin were more interesting than those in the west, and the Kudamm seemed like a relic of the cold war.

A According to my guide, that's because Berlin was in the Russian zone and when Soviets divided the city into sectors, between themselves and the Allies, they kept the best and most historical and culturally significant parts of the city for themselves.

We went to Berlin long ago (2006) with a coworker that lived in West Berlin. It was interesting to hear his stories about going into East Berlin.
While the Checkpoint Charlie itself is cheesy I found the stories of people trying to escape in the museum there interesting. Heartbreaking at times.
Will definitely check out the Allied Museum. Thanks!

Is that the museum in Olympic Stadium Park?

https://www.west-alliierte-in-berlin.de

If so, it was very interesting. If not, this is another museum.

I also enjoyed touring Tempelhof. The massive terminal is still there. In good weather, you can walk the runways. There is a visitor center and a small museum in the terminal and a statue commemorating the Berlin Airlift in front.

I have visited the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park a few times. The architecture is so unique. I am not sure how it would be in the winter, but it was beautiful in the spring.

That's certainly true from a historical perspective, but there's a lot of modern cultural stuff that's more fun in the former east than the former west, too. I didn't follow details, but I suspect it was much cheaper to do things that had relatively high financial risk (like open a club, restaurant, or theater) in the former east for quite a while after the wall came down.

It is. And yet enough people want the GDR back. It was great back then. The doofuses (worldwide) are booming, even if we've always had them.

bitterproffit there are two museums with similar names

I’ve went to the one at Olympic Park - the one you linked to - a couple of years ago.

Small and a bit disorganised but interesting nonetheless. Looked like a couple of portacabins stuck together and badly signposted.

I discovered it by accident simply because of the S/U Bahn route I chose to get to the Stadium !

It’s totally different from the Allied museum at Tempelhof.

Thanks for the suggestion about the memorial ar Treptow. Also added to my list of things to do now!

It’s been a decade or more since I visited it, but the DDR museum provides some insights into the reality of daily life in the “Antifaschistischer Musterstaat”.

Walking around the Tempelhof terminal and airfield was indeed fun.

I'll just add that Museumsinsel (Museum Island), Konzerthaus Berlin, Gendarmenmarkt, Staatsoper, Humboldt-Universität, Berliner Dom, Sankt Hedwigs-Kathedrale, etc., are all located in the former East sector.